Revisiting one of my favorite Fulci gialli, the psychedelicly-inclined A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. Absence does make me remember what drew me to this movie in the first place (the dreamlike quality of Carol's "trips"), although the eviscerated dog sequence still is unnecessary. Yeah, typical too-much Fulci sadism (the dogs are fake but they are a very convincing fake)...that moment is the one flaw in this otherwise awesome whodunit.
And Florinda Bolkan and Jean Sorel as wife and husband? Hell yes. Bolkan's Carol has "dreams" about her hippie neighbor Julia Duer...and remembers details about Duer and her flat a bit too clearly after Julia is found murdered. So are these details Carol spills to her psychiatrist her wishful envy -she's a repressed daughter of a politican and married to a lawyer- or are the details relaying something much worse?
Lizard... is perhaps Fulci's most inventive and off-the-wall murder mystery. I love all the wonky shit with the hippie characters. I've said this before, Lizard... would be even better if Fulci had the typecast Ray Lovelock as the male hippie.Still, I'm appreciating the inventive storyline and the whole psychedelic flavor of the film. For awhile there, I was burnt out on ALIWS, but now I see it's Lucio's most linear and clear storyline (as happily convoluted as it gets.) It's one of the best gialli not made by Dario Argento.
For the record, my favorite non-Argento gialli are:
What Have you Done to Solange?
All the Colors of the Dark
and
A Lizard in a Woman's Skin.
I would admire Lucio a lot more had he stuck with giallos and westerns, I know both genres were all but dead when the ultra violent zombie craze hit Italy and the world in the late '70s.
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